Hope you like the video :) It's the next part of Who is Elrond and one main topic is the arrival of Wizards/Istari, but also Elrond marrying and having Children and how the peaceful time slowly changes. It's a bit of a "bride" part in the script 😅 ► Thank you to the Artists (links in the description): Kimberly80 Ted Nasmith Jenny Dolfen Art Sara Morello Art
I never thought that much about the timing of Elrond and Celebrian's marriage, but your explanation makes sense. I'd just like to add that Elrond also discovered after Sauron's demise that he could use Vilya to strengthen Imladris and stave off that the dreaded feeling of fading for all his people. This created the perfect environment for a family.
@@ThePhilosophersGames “People assume that time is a strict progression from cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.” (Dr Who) 😉
This appeared in my feed and I liked the video already, but at this point it will be...August by the time I get around to watching it 😭 Sorry! I'll try and make more time for your videos
Wonderful, informative and well narrated as always. My only thought is about Elrond fostering humans. It was actually an ingrained Elven trait, as we can see beginning with Elu Thingol in Doriath. These lofty Lords were all the time pocketing stray humans, collecting them like a child collects gerbils, just to amuse themselves with a brief pet that requires little investment of time since they die so fast. If I were a great Elf Lord I might collect several humans to keep around. No sooner than you tire of them they fall over dead.
Thank you ^^ Can you elaborate on "be mindful of your tempo and how you mark your maps" a bit? Was there a mistake with the maps in this video? I know that one map has too many markers + too much text 😂 In case you mean that. I usually try to avoid that of possible, but here I didn't find a good solution without showing the markers not long enough.
I really enjoyed your video, as always. Thanks for all the effort you put in. Around 12:50 you quote from Silmarillion, that Narya remained hidden until the end, and only Elrond, Galadriel and Círdan knew who held it. And yet I have sometimes the impression that Saruman knew and was envious of it. I'm not sure if this has been documented or speculated by commentators.
Yes I think it's mentioned in Unfinished Tales that Saruman knew and was jealous. I can try finding the quote later. Also thank you, much appreciated :)
I have a question!!!! It is kind of unrelated but has to do with the start of the third age. I always wondered something and I wanted to hear your opinion on this. We know Gollum took the ring through the murder of his friend. We know he became a cannibal. He tried to snatch human babies out of cradles, killed and ate orc babies, ect. All the stoor hobbits disappear mysteriously from the valley of the Anduin after Gollum found the ring. I have a feeling that over the span of years and years that Gollum killed and ate them all. Then he had only orcs left. Can you give me your opinion on this or could you make a video about this?
Interesting idea (though grim 😅) . I don't think he ate all, but I look into it. Maybe they just fled from this place due to him? There is some info on Gollum's home village in Unfinished Tales. But can't remember the exact details.
@@ThePhilosophersGames OHHH, that would be amazing!!! It is grim though, yes. XD But I always thought the ring has such malicious ways to destroy people. It would fit Sauron, using the ring as a virus that would corrupt a person which would then it turn destroy its own people from the inside, and Gollum had the ring for such a long time, so maybe the Stoors were his food supply until they were extinct and then he had to turn to a new food source, eating an entire village sounds like a lot...But over a stretch over 500 years it is not that much I guess. Sauron doesn't have to destroy himself while his ring is lost, his ring makes people destroy their own people for him.
I wouldn't think he'd be able to eat so many; he was still only one being. I seem to remember reading it was the rising evil in Dol Guldur that led the hobbits to leave.
@@willaince7382 Sometimes I get confused between the books and the films, but I recollect that Sméagol was blamed for these misdeeds and chased away, which is what took him to the Misty Mountains. In this case, they rid themselves of Gollum before leaving. And that fits with the other thing we know (as Istari said) that the hobbits left because of the rising evil in Dol Goldur.
It has been 2 weeks? Wow how times passes, but I have not forgotten (sorry for the late answer though): So there are several versions of the Hunt for the Ring in the Unfinished Tales. In one (B) some of the Stoors lived there when the Nazgûl search there for the One Ring "The account of the vain journey of the Nazgul up the Vales of Anduin is much the same in version B as in that printed in full above (A), but with the difference that in B the Stoor settlements were not entirely deserted at that time; and such of the Stoors as dwelt there were slain or driven away by the Nazgul." In version A "They were told also by Khamûl that no dwelling of Halflings could be discovered in the Vales of Anduin, and that the villages of the Stoors by the Gladden had long been deserted." In Note 9 we can read: "In a letter written in 1959 my father said: 'Between 2463 [when Déagol the Stoor found the One Ring, according to the Tale of Years] and the beginning of Gandalf's special enquiries concerning the Ring (nearly 500 years later) they [the Stoors] appear indeed to have died out altogether (except of course for Sméagol); or to have fled from the shadow of Dol Guldur.'" I agree Gollum could probably not eat that much (and they would have fled at some point) and Tolkien thought about some of them still living there. So I assume the just abandoned it and settles somewhere else. Gollum haunting them might be a goof reason 😅
7:25 You argue that the "first bad omen" of the Third Age (at least in the North) was the division of Arnor into three kingdoms following the death of its tenth King, Eärendur, in T.A. 861. Respectfully, I disagree. I believe the first bad omen for the Northlands came a little over two centuries before that, in T.A. 652. In that year, Eärendur's grandfather Valandur, the eighth King of Arnor, died unexpectedly. Valandur had succeeded his father Tarondor in T.A. 602, and ruled Arnor for only fifty years - a fine, long reign in our world, but a shockingly short kingship for an heir of Isildur's line. Of course, we don't know how Valandur died. We only know he died prematurely, because of the short length of his reign, and because Tolkien placed a dagger symbol "†" beside his name in Appendix A, in which *"† indicates a premature death, in battle or otherwise, though an annal of the event is not always included."* So we don't _know_ that Valandur's death was violent; or that it was an early feat of the Enemy's agents. Possibly he died of a cold. But we are talking about omens here. And it cannot have escaped Elrond's notice, as he heard the news - or, perhaps, as he stood sadly in Valandur's funeral cortège, then gently placed the crown on Elendur's head and proclaimed him Arnor's ninth King - that he was reliving events from only five decades before. It would, at the very least, have made the son of Eärendil reflect on the strange mortality of Men.
With "omen" I probably chose the wrong word, I mean the first big event that indicated an end to the peace and a time of change coming. . This might be - as you point out - an earlier hint for a time of change, but the children of Eärendur being at strife over who should rule (though tradition made this clear) and Arnor splitting up is in my opinion the major event that (among a few other details) ultimately also led to the downfall of Arnor itself. In addition it is difficult to implement the death of a character into your conclusions when we know nothing about it. In an early version of LotR Valandur breaks the the sword that maybe later became Narsil. He was maybe a son of Isildur as Christopher Tolkien suggests. It seems Tolkien later moved him further down the family tree, but only kept his name. In Peoples of Middle-earth we also get his birth year, which was Third Age 462, his date of death with the note "†slain" is the same (T.A. 652). So he was 190 years old which is not that bad, but ofc much younger in comparison to all other Kings of Arnor until Argeleb I. Though after him a trend in a decreasing lifespan can be seen as well. So I agree this was maybe the first omen, but T.A. 861 was the point were it became clear that the time of peace has come to an end. I maybe consider making a change of the wording for the all-in-one version. Thanks for the hint.
@@ThePhilosophersGames Yes, that's probably a better way to put it. What I should have said was something like, "The chaos attending he death of Eärendur doesn't really count as an 'omen'. It was more like an alarm bell. Omens generally require interpretation. Arnor's sundering was more like the patient actually getting the bad test result back from the lab: 'Yep, it's definitely cancer.' " I do understand where you were coming from, though. Whike hindsight makes it clear (at least in the final version, the one that made Appendix A) that we are meant to take it as given that the dissension among the sons of Eärendur was stirred up by the Enemy's agents - Sauron was always a big "divide and conquer" guy - the ground-level view, particularly amongst mortal Men, would have lacked the perspective afforded by later events. (Or immortality.) If you were a citizen of Bree, the proclamations about handing in your Arnor documents for a Cardolan passport wouldn't necessarily portend disaster. (Bree being Bree, I suspect some Bree-landers hardly noticed.) Eriador didn't descend immediately into chaos and famine. It took a while. (Angmar didn't arise from Rhudaur's spoilt husk until c. T.A. 1300.) What it _was,_ unmistakably, was the end of the kingdom Elendil founded. For anyone who knew anything about history, or even had a family, or had been in a relationship, it would have been very hard to interpret Arnor's messy breakup as a sign of good things coming over the horizon.
Yes in the Old English/Anglo-Saxon pronunciation of the names (which I used here), the G sound should be a so called voiced velar fricative (IPA: /ɣ/). Hard to describe the sound, but it's a German CH as in Bach, just voiced. I think it's e.g. still common in Dutch. I know Tolkien completely anglicized the name Sméagol in readings (which imo makes sense for readings to be honest), but I usually go with the Old English pronunciation. I learnt to like it 😄 and the pronunciation of the vowels is closer to my native language, but yes the G sound is still strange.
She could have tried to become a High Queen of the Noldor, but she did not. She could have also claimed to be the Queen of Lothlórien, but she did not either, quote: “but they [Galadriel and Celeborn] took no title of King or Queen; for they said that they were only guardians of this small but fair realm, the last eastward outpost of the Elves.”
You can't expect people to read giant blocks of text while they are listening to you talk. You do this a few times in the video, and it's really jarring. If we need to read a block of text to understand what's happening, you need to read it to us.
Yes I know what you mean. Usually it's juts additional information (or a long quote that proves what I say), but video should be understandable without it, so you don't need to read the larger texts. PS: Esp. the character info, is basically just a short summary what the character did and is known for. The info is often explained in the earlier parts of the video.
I can see why one would not pause the video all the time, really might kill the experience, but ofc for those who want to read those extra infos, it's a possibility. Like in this video there one big block of text quote from LotR about Malbeth's Second Prophecy, but it has no relevancy for this video. It's just there for people who want to read more about it or see the source for this. In the all-in-one version the character profile texts also appear again and again, so you have plenty of time to read them without pausing. Keep in mind this is still part of one big video that is multiple hours long.
